


Built to Fall Apart (Then Fall Back Together)

by lady_ragnell



Series: Are We Out of the Woods [1]
Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: D&D is rough on characters, Don't copy to another site, F/M, Past Abuse, Past Character Death, Past a lot of things in fact, Post-Canon, Recovery, See notes for warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 12:38:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21253523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_ragnell/pseuds/lady_ragnell
Summary: Haoti goes on a journey to tell his mother he's alive, and has to reckon with his past, with Valira there to defend him.





	Built to Fall Apart (Then Fall Back Together)

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings:** there's a lot of discussion of past horrible events in this fic, but none of them happen on the page or are graphically depicted. Primarily, there's a lot of talk about abuse (spousal and child) without specificity about whether it was emotional or physical, and child abandonment. There's also past POV character death (he got resurrected).
> 
> A palate cleanser written between two origfic projects. This is the first part of a duology, the second part coming ... probably sometime after my Yuletide fic is finished, and about visiting Valira's family as opposed to Haoti's.
> 
> Title is from Taylor Swift's "Out of the Woods."

“Haoti, I'd like to talk to you.”

Haoti looks up from his work to find Phi standing in the door of the armory. No one knows what to do with him, and no one asks him to do much, so he finds his own tasks. All the swords and knives in the armory probably don't need sharpening and polishing, with Phi and her brothers and friends all so good at taking care of the weapons they actually use, but the armory at Fairpoint Hold tells a story of a martial past, a history it's trying to forget. He can't blame them for trying to forget—it's what he's doing there, too—but the swords still need sharpening, the daggers and axes still need the rust kept away. “What's wrong?” he asks, setting down his whetstone.

Phi comes in and sits down. There's a letter in her hands, but that's nothing new. When he knew her on the road, she always seemed to be reading or writing or rereading one, and now that she's firmly home, the one of her friends who wanders the least, she's the one who receives letters from their friends, from people who want their help, from the new government of Tyne panicking over the succession and the borders and the years of repair they have ahead of them. She's never wanted to talk to him about any of them. “I've received a letter about you.”

He looks down at the sword in his lap. It's a short sword and small even for that, made for a child, but sharper than a child's blade should ever be. Phi seems sober, but she always does. He has no way of knowing if this is a letter calling him a traitor and asking for his head, or something else. “What about me?”

“I think you should read it,” she says, and hands it to him.

It's addressed to _The dragon-slayers at Fairpoint Hold_ in careful, flowing handwriting, almost familiar. The ink and paper are what give him his first inklings of what he's holding, before he even unfolds it. He remembers letters coming to his home at Fort Beldale on paper like this, dark with tree bark, written in ink that smelled herbal but seemed to flow just as well as the ink he knew. Sometimes his mother would read the letters to him, all from her kin, and she would read the descriptions of the forest, the trees so tall even the oldest elves couldn't remember them as saplings, and she would smile but later at dinner, if she came, her eyes would be red.

He can't open it, and he looks up at Phi, helpless. “What does it say?”

“Nothing bad.” She hesitates. “You don't have to read it now. Or while I'm here. But you deserve to know who's asking after you, and what they're saying.” Haoti often finds his words betraying him, and it's that way now, his mouth moving but nothing coming out. Phi stands up. “I'll go. Let us know if you need—”

“No,” he blurts, and nearly collapses with relief at managing to get that out before she walks away. “I'm sorry, but I can't read this alone.”

She sits back down again. “That doesn't mean you want to read it with me. I could send someone else.”

He doesn't ask who else. Phi's brothers are all friendly enough, and Kithri and Quil tolerate him, and Valira watches him often but speaks to him little. Terry is perhaps the one who talks to him most, but even then, Haoti keeps his own company more often than not. “No. Please stay.”

Her face softens with pity, but she stays.

Haoti forces his shaking hands into movement, and unfolds the letter. _I apply to you in hopes of information about someone I hold dear,_ it begins, and he has to stop to breathe. _His name is Haoti Ewhoza, and I am told he traveled with you. I am also told that he is dead, so you need not worry that you'll be the bearer of this horrible news. But I must ask you of the manner of his end, and of the last days of his life. It's been a long time since I saw him, and my nephew, when he wrote that he had died, only said that he had been with you, and that he died in search of redemption. I beg you, anything you will tell me might ease my mind. Solomon will try to soften the blow for me, but I would like to know anything you can say about my son._ At the bottom, it's signed _With hope, Aredhel Seedblest, formerly of House Ewhoza_.

He'd never known her family name, before. He'd been too embarrassed to ask Solomon.

“You see why I wanted you to read it,” says Phi. “No one else has to know about that letter. It never has to be answered, if you don't want.”

They're all so gentle with one another's pasts. Even his. His first group, the ones Phi helped to kill when they killed the mermaid Vesta, they weren't. Theden, angry from birth, it seemed, and with every right from the hard life he'd spoken of off-hand, teased Haoti for his wealthy upbringing, for having a father who was one of Seath's faithful vassals and generals. Lok, with a snort, called him “rich boy” and nothing else until it was his blow that killed Amana, like only wielding death could make him worthy of respect. Haemir mocked Theden for his poor roots as much as Haoti for his rich ones, and shrugged off the deeds he did in Seath's service. They were his companions for a short time, all told, but he's still forgotten how to accept kindness.

“She deserves better than that from me.”

“Does she?” asks Phi, and just looks at him, waits to see if he's sure.

Phi is smart. She's strong, of course, almost unbelievably strong and fast—the whole world knows what she's done, and what kind of warrior she is. Anyone would tremble to be her enemy. But Haoti knew when he met her, subdued her to drag her back to Seath, that her strength wouldn't mean half as much as her intelligence does. She sees things, puts details together. She must be putting together his cousin being the only relative he's spoken to or of, the fact that his mother doesn't know if he's alive or dead, Aredhel's admission that it's been a long time since she saw him.

“Maybe it's less about what she deserves, and more about the kind of person I should be,” he says, into her silence.

“What kind of person do you think you should be?”

For a while, it seemed like everyone but Haoti knew that. Seath thought he should be a perfect soldier. Theden, Lok, and Haemir thought he should be an efficient leader of their team, ruthless and a little cruel to suit them. Solomon thought he should be the kind of person who redeems himself. Valira hoped he was the kind of person to sacrifice himself, though that barely stings anymore. Phi asks it like it's a genuine question, though.

“The kind who tells his mother he's alive.”

Phi nods and stands up. “Whatever you think is right. Tell me if there's anything we can do to help.”

She leaves, and Haoti sits there in the armory for a long time, and doesn't touch the whetstone or the sword again.

*

Valira finds him later in the garden. It's where he sees her most often, outside of the communal meals that everyone tends to eat at the hold. Iain is often around in the gardens, but Valira has a habit of finding the wilder places in them, and so is he. For all both of them like their solitude, when they end up in the same place in the garden, they rarely walk away to give each other privacy.

They also rarely talk, but today's a day for changes, so when she comes close enough, with a nod, already crouching down to check a row of plants that's been unhealthy, he sits back on his heels and says “Did Phi send you?”

Her eyebrows draw together and she turns to look at him. “Should she have?”

“A letter from my mother arrived today, asking how I died. She doesn't know I'm alive. Solomon's letter about it, if he thought to write one, must not have arrived yet.”

Sometimes Valira's silences don't feel like silences, from everything she shows on her face. The curiosity, the confusion, the anger, the sadness, they all show so easily. “I didn't know you had relatives besides Solomon. Ones you talk to, I mean.”

“Just my parents, and I don't … I don't talk to either of them. I found excuses to be away from my father, and Aredhel left when I was still young.”

Her face snaps into a scowl. “She left you, and still thinks she has the right to send that letter?”

Haoti doesn't know how to say what he needs to, but he can't let Valira think Aredhel is a monster, either. “She left my father, and if you knew the way he treated her, you would only think it just.”

That doesn't help. She turns away and clenches her fists in the soil. “Men who are cruel to their wives are often cruel to their children too. She could have brought you with her.”

“Not really. He let her go, since he already had his heir of her, but if she'd taken me, he would have pursued her to the ends of the earth.” Now that he's talking about it, to someone who doesn't know, it seems like he can't stem the flow of the words. “He was one of Seath's generals, my father. He's retired now, too many injuries to keep going, but he wanted a son to carry on his line, and he's how Seath knew to find me. And to leave me alive.”

“But you don't want him to know you're alive.”

“No. And even if I did, I hope he would be in jail to learn it. He was a loyalist. Is one. I was a disappointment to him, even when I tried not to be. If I had to choose to be a paladin, not a warrior like Phi, I picked the wrong god.” He remembers sneers, taunts that there was too much of Aredhel's softness in him, after she left.

“And working with Seath … that was you trying not to disappoint him?”

Haoti would love to say yes, that it was his only reason for entering Seath's service when the summons came. It's a lie, though, even if the truth is too big and complicated to put into words. “Partly,” he says. “Or proving to him that I could be what he thought I should.”

Valira stares at the ground, and he waits for her response. Sometimes she needs time to think. “She should have fought for you,” she finally says. “Leaving people who need you isn't something you should do lightly.”

Haoti was fifteen when she left, and heartsick with it, left with a human father who didn't understand that fifteen was a little young to be thrown fully into warrior training for someone with his half-blood heritage, and left with the knowledge that he'd lost his mother to his father's cruelty and the only way to survive it was to become like him. He's wanted to hate Aredhel in the years since, but he knows none of it is her fault, not truly. Not the way it's Oveld's. “I don't think she did it lightly.”

“What will you do, then?”

“I don't know. I hadn't known where she was before. I found Solomon because her first few letters, before my father stopped me seeing them, came from his home, and he wouldn't trust me with her location while I was possessed. Now … I have to at least write her.” He hesitates, but Valira is listening, and there are things about him that she understands that maybe no one else could. “I might go to her. At least for a visit. To see who I am, with her. If I remind her of my father.”

Haoti is coming to know Valira's silences very well. He knows when she's decided that she doesn't have a response to make and the conversation is over, when she thinks someone has just said something foolish and doesn't want to be impolite, when she's struggling with something she thinks she should say but can't quite phrase. This, he thinks, is the last. “Did she tell you that you did?” she finally asks, careful. It's not what she wanted to say at first, if he knows her at all.

“No. No, of course not. But I look like him. And in those days, I wanted his approval where I could get it.”

Valira turns quickly away, and it's his quick eyes more than his sense of magic that let him see the power she puts into the ground, pushing the plants back towards life. She doesn't do it often, help the plants grow like that. Any gardener worth her salt knows that magic may fix a plant, or speed its growth, but it doesn't teach it how to heal or how to grow on its own. A little encouragement is good, but magic should go into the soil, not the roots. “And now you don't,” she finally says.

Maybe it's a question, a confirmation that he really is worth the magic she spent on him. Maybe it's a reassurance, a reminder that she believes he is worth it. Maybe it's just an observation. “Yes,” he says regardless.

“Take someone with you,” she blurts, and ducks her head further, hair swinging forward from where it's tucked behind her ears to cover her expression. “You shouldn't do it alone.”

“Who would come with me, a long hike over land and into the woods to see me reconcile or not reconcile with my mother?” It's the question of who would watch him read a letter from his mother again, only worse. This time there's no one already there to ask to stay, and this time it's a much bigger favor.

“Me.”

Her face is still hidden, and much as Haoti wants to see it, he respects her turning away. It just means he can't try to read her reasons in her expressions, if it's all pity and duty. “Would you?” he asks. “Why?”

Valira does look at him then. Pity, of course. But maybe something else too. “I wouldn't want to be alone, if it were me. And I … I won't say I understand completely. But I know what it is, to fear that you're not what your parents would want you to be.”

Haoti only knows the barest bones of what sent Valira out into the wide world, and whatever confidences she and Trilli share when Trilli visits, they don't share them around him. But she sounds sincere, and he's not sure he has the strength to say no. He already knows how to travel with Valira, and he remembers Aredhel's descriptions of the forest where she grew up, too. Valira might get some pure joy from seeing it, and that might be reason enough to let her come. “Thank you,” he says. “If I decide to go, I'll let you know. And if it's not inconvenient, I'd be glad of your company.”

She stands abruptly. “Tell me, then. I don't have anything to do so urgent that it can't wait for you.”

With that, she's off, striding away across the garden to a different bed, and Haoti keeps weeding the one he's in, with nothing else to do but think.

*

It takes him almost two weeks to admit that he's going to go and shouldn't put it off until winter, and in the two weeks nobody breathes a word about it. Valira and Phi both keep their own counsel, so the others may not even know.

Seized by an impulse he can't explain, though, he mentions his plan over a group dinner one night, cutting awkwardly into a companionable silence that rose up in the wake of one of Lanra's stories, the mundane happenings of a day made interesting in his mouth. “I'm going to visit my mother.”

There's a flutter of activity at that, everyone pretending they're not shocked at the thought of him having a mother, let alone visiting her. It's Terry who makes it to speaking first, only a little strain in his attempt at easy interest. “Decided it was time?”

“I suppose so.” With the eyes of a dozen people on him, Haoti can't spit out the whole explanation, and he's not going to ask Phi or Valira to, either.

Quil speaks next, her smile warmer than he was expecting. “Do you need company? Where is she?”

He answers the easier part of the question first. “The forest past Tyne's eastern border, the heart of it. It's her clan's home. She's elvish.”

“I've heard it's a beautiful forest,” says Valira. “If you don't mind, I'll take the trip with you. Been a while since I was in the deep woods, and if you don't want company on the last leg, I can make camp at the edge of their clan lands and wait for you.”

Maybe half the people at the table know that's not true at all. Haoti watched her in the throne room with Seath, talking herself out of trouble, and he knows she only talks so much, so fluently, when she's lying. Then, she was doing it to save lives. Now, she's doing it to save his secret, his privacy, his imagined dignity. “If you want to come,” he says, “you'd be welcome.”

“Then I'll come,” she says, with an easy shrug, and turns back to her roast.

“You two need more along than just that?” asks Kal, with a dart of a glance at Iain and then at Phi.

Valira doesn't respond, so Haoti makes himself. “I'm not expecting trouble. Two will be fine, and we'll get back safe.”

They accept that, and Iain asks about the route and the forest, and Urien mentions some healing herbs found there that he wouldn't mind having a supply of, and maybe he's being coddled, to have none of them asking about his mother, and why he's going now and not sooner or never, but it's kindly meant. And it would feel like coddling if they asked, too, so he's glad they've chosen the way that lets him have his privacy, even if he still has to force himself to speak.

*

Once he's decided, and announced his decision, the idea seems to pick up speed without him meaning it to. One day he makes his announcement, and the next Len is frowning over his worn and secondhand travel clothes and measuring him for a new set, and the day after that Lanra drags him to the armory to properly replace his kit from what he's been sharpening and polishing, and the next thing he knows it's been a week and there's a bag sitting by the door to his room, the leather creaking with newness, packed with clothes and supplies and travel rations, and he has nothing more to keep him at Fairpoint Hold.

“Do you feel like they're hinting at something?” he asks Valira, wry, when he runs into her in the hall the afternoon those rations are delivered.

“They want us to be ready, that's all. You think Quil and Phi haven't heaped everything magical that I know how to use from our journey on me? Luckily it isn't much, or I'd be clanking when I walk, and we'll have a hard time getting through the woods that way.” She puts a hand on his arm. “You can change your mind. Now or when we're halfway there or five minutes before we see her. You know that?”

“I know.”

And he hasn't yet. He might be terrified, but this feels right, and he thinks it still will even when he's sick with that terror and he sees Aredhel for the first time in years. “Good,” she says with a nod. “Tomorrow?”

Haoti opens his mouth to object, say she no doubt needs more time, or that he does, but that's not true. Both of them are used to traveling with much less notice than this, and the longer they put it off, the more excuses he might find, and it's better this way, to leave quickly.

Especially since Kithri is due back any day, and he'd rather hear her opinion of all this after he's returned than before he goes. He's glad that the younger adventurers, and particularly Star, are gone for the same reasons.

“I'll be ready mid-morning or so,” he offers. “From what I remember from what people have mentioned, there's a good spot for camping not quite a full day's walk in the right direction, so we might as well get a late start.”

“I know the place you mean, and we'll be able to get there easily, and have one last lazy morning and breakfast at home.”

Haoti nods and sees her off, and spends the rest of the day thinking more about where his home is than about Aredhel, for once. It's almost a relief, to worry about something else, and he'd thank Valira for it if he weren't so embarrassed and if he thought she'd done it on purpose.

The next morning, he's ready long before they need to leave. Almost as soon as breakfast is over, and the bulk of the farewells given, his sword is strapped to his hip, and it feels more at home there than it has since he was brought back to life, with the bag on his back and the armor weighing him down. It doesn't feel like none of it ever happened, but it does feel, for the first time, like all of it may truly be behind him.

Terry laughs when he sees him pacing by the gate. “I'll go get her. From what Quil tells me, she's sitting in her room with all her gear strapped on trying not to make you leave earlier than you want to. You two may as well just go and make camp a little early tonight.”

Haoti opens his mouth to say that's not necessary, but Terry is off at a trot, and it's enough of a lie that it seems stupid to call him back.

Gossip travels quickly around the hold, so there are a few shouted encouragements and good-lucks out windows and down from the wall. Haoti calls his thanks back, only glad they aren't all coming down to say goodbye again, and is relieved when Valira comes out. Quil, Phi, and Terry are all with her, of course, but he'd expected that they would be there for the goodbye. All of them, and Valira, come to the gate to say goodbye to Kithri whenever she leaves. This is no different.

“Heading out early?” Quil asks, speeding up a little reach him first. That's unusual. Of the four of them, she talks to him the least, even if Kithri's words to him are usually warnings or edicts, now that she can order him around without risking forcing him to obey.

“If we're both ready, it's silly not to,” says Valira, jogging to catch her. Most of what she's wearing is familiar from their journey, that desperate trip around and around, from forest to orclands and back again, that gave them all the protection they needed to fight Seath and Lolth, but she looks better than she did then. Then, she was too lean and wan and worn down. Now, she's had months of happier living, better food and rest, and nothing horrible weighing her down. It's only now, seeing her in the same old clothes he recognizes, that he realizes what a change it is.

“We can stay, if you had plans for a longer goodbye,” he offers.

Valira grabs Quil's hand, and Quil turns to her, frown already on her face. “You'll be fine?”

“Quil.” Valira sighs and hugs her. “It's not _my_ family. We'll be fine.”

When they pull apart, Terry takes Quil's hand, as easily as he takes Phi's, and Haoti exhales, relieved. They rely on each other, the four adventurers. They all hate being apart, but Quil seems to hate it most of all, and if Terry knows it like Phi does, and if his presence helps, he doesn't feel as bad taking Valira away. “Call on us if you need us,” Phi says, and clasps his shoulder easily enough before moving on to hug Valira. “Kithri will probably check in on the two of you too.”

“If the reception is that terrible, I'll pull us away to the Beastlands with a Plane Shift, and then bring us back here,” says Valira, which isn't a plan she's mentioned to him before, but he's grateful for it anyway.

“Most people can't go to other planes when they have an awkward family reunion,” says Terry with a laugh, and gives them each a hug in turn, so much freer with affection than most others at Fairpoint Hold. He's got his own shadows—everyone does—but they aren't quite the same as the ones his wife and her siblings share.

Phi and Quil can take care of themselves without Valira, the same way he can, but it still makes him feel better to be leaving Terry behind with them, someone who loves them just as much, in a different way.

“Come on,” says Valira. “We could say goodbye all morning, I'm sure, but that sounds awful.” She looks at Phi and Quil. “Back sooner than you know it.” She taps the shoulder of her armor, the stylized feathers that stand out. “Maybe we'll even fly back.”

Haoti can feel his eyes widen at that, but it sounds amazing, too, and he smiles and nods and waves and lets her usher him out the gates while the three of them inside call out last goodbyes and advice about campsites, as though Valira doesn't know everything there is to know about sleeping in the woods.

When they're out of sight of the gates, she shakes out her shoulders and sighs. “Sorry. I think they forgot how long I was on my own.”

They both know that's not really true. Quil was on her own for a long time too, and for all much of Kithri's past is still shrouded from them, he thinks she knows her share about solitude as well. It's a lot of the reason none of them like to let the others go. “You're not on your own,” he points out this time. He still thinks, more often than not, that he's barely a person, but hopefully he'll stave the loneliness off for her.

“I know.” She looks at him sidelong. “You're not either.”

“I know,” he says, and that's all the talking they do for a long time.

*

Traveling with Valira is easy, he finds as the days pass. She's not given to conversation any more than he is, so they go hours and hours barely saying a word, just asking for a stop, or a meal, or pointing something out. They travel fast, just two of them used to hard travel and with some woods sense, and make camp early almost every night, traveling by a map Phi sent with them.

Routine at night is easy. They find a place to sleep, and Valira leaves to hunt for their next day of food, and Haoti sets up camp and starts a fire. Usually by the time she returns, the fire is well underway, the tent is set up with bedrolls inside, and the water is warming for tea. She comes back with pheasant or rabbit or something else small and easy to travel with, or just as often berries and mushrooms and other bounty of the forest. On their first journey, she took her turns hunting and foraging, but as often as not, they were in harsh places that didn't give them much food. On this one, in the forests where Valira knows the uses of every root and leaf, they feast every night.

At night, they set their bedrolls up side by side without any fuss. He cares more about modesty than she does, but it's nearing autumn, and both of them know that sleeping apart is stupid when the nights are getting cold, so modesty gives way to practicality without any discussion on the matter.

They pass the border out of Tyne with no trouble at all. Once, Seath's soldiers patrolled the borders. It's how a handsome young officer met a beautiful elf straying far from home, and convinced her to go with him. Now, Seath's army is in disarray and the new one has pulled back from the borders to sort out more important things, and beyond the border, the elves don't need guard stations and patrols to listen to the forest and learn who's in it.

Beyond Tyne, the forest gets older and older, the trunks of trees so wide that Haoti could only put his arms all around one in four, if that. Valira walks with her neck craned, looking not for a glimpse of sky but just at the patterns of leaves overhead. Everything seems hushed and anticipatory, but no one greets them, even if Haoti is certain they're being watched.

“We should find a settlement within the next few days,” Valira observes over roast grouse one night. “I don't know if it will be the right one, but they might be able to point us in the right direction. Probably it's time for you to decide if you want me along.”

Haoti looks up at her, startled. “Of course I do. Did I ever imply otherwise?”

“You never said one way or another, but I wanted to offer. I can stay here quite happily for a week or three, or I can come along with you as a wolf or a raven or a deer and give you the support without you worrying about introducing me, or I can come as myself.”

“Yourself,” he says instantly. “I'm enough of a coward that I'd rather you go than me, I certainly don't want to go without you.”

She prods at the fire with a stick, and then tosses the stick in. “I don't know how you can stand us. We must not bring you very good memories.”

The days with them were desperate and awful, but they were also the first glimpses of freedom and hope he'd had in a long time. Even if they were wrong, they believed he could be a better man. And Valira was always the greatest hope of them all, carrying a demon but not broken by it. She reached out, time and again, even if he couldn't reach back, and she gave him a new life. That she thinks he could dislike her is shame past the telling of it. “I think you overestimate some of my other memories.”

Her mouth twists. “But not the ones of your mother. You remember her well, don't you?”

“Yes. She was … a caged bird. Not meant to be where she was, but beautiful enough that you wanted to keep her.” He blushes a little at the metaphor, the poetry books he would sometimes read when he could sneak a moment of privacy in Seath's service showing themselves, but Valira just nods, thoughtful. “She was a good woman. Like you four are. You reminded me to be better, even if I couldn't do it in the way you needed me to.”

Valira is silent for a long time. “I'm not that good,” she finally says. “But I hope that she is. And I'm glad that you don't hate us.”

He never has. And certainly not her. But he doesn't know how to say that, and he doesn't know how to change the subject, and he stands up to get a few more dry branches for the fire to boil more water.

Valira doesn't speak again either, just goes back to their easy routine, but when they go to their tent that night, she rests a hand on his arm and leaves it there as they both fall asleep.

*

They stumble into a settlement by accident the very next day. It's not on their map, or their map is wrong, and one is as likely as the other, but one moment they're walking through unremarkable forest, and the next they've found a settlement built around the trees, and up in the trees, gardens in a clearing and around roots, taking advantage of the small break in tree cover, and ladders and bridges between the houses.

It's mid-morning, and half the settlement seems to be harvesting squash in the garden, and they all stop where they are, residents and interlopers alike shocked by the sight of each other.

“We're not here to harm anyone,” Valira says with more urgency than he would have expected. “We won't tell anyone you're here, and we won't hurt you, or take any of your hard-earned harvest.”

A man, an elf just beginning to show his age, steps forward from the group of gardeners, looking between them with a frown. “Then what brings you here, travelers? We don't see many coming from that direction, not these many years. The rumors are true, then? Seath the Traitor is defeated, Mezzon fallen, and new order brought to the lands past the forest?”

Haoti shakes off his shock enough to speak. “She's Valira Wayfinder, one of those who defeated Seath and freed Mezzon,” he says. “It's all true.”

There's a mild sensation at that, all of them murmuring to each other, and the man speaks over them. “We're honored to have such an esteemed visitor, then. The whole world is easier, with him gone from it. What brings you to our forest?”

Valira turns to him, and waits to see what he'll say. It would be easier if she introduced him the way he did her, but he doesn't blame her for not doing it. “I'm looking for Clan Seedblest, if you know of them,” he says.

A woman, the oldest among the group, steps forward. “I'm kin to Clan Seedblest. What business have you with them?”

“My mother,” he says, with no grace at all, and winces even as the murmuring starts again. “I'm seeking Aredhel Seedblest. She's my mother, and she thinks I'm dead. My name is Haoti, if she's mentioned me.”

“Ahh.” The woman comes forward and takes his face between her hands. “Yes, you look like Aredhel. It was a grief to us when she left, and a greater one when she came back from cruelty with her son left in those cruel hands. She'll be glad and glad again to see you.”

Haoti has to blink away tears, his heart in his throat. His whole life, he's known that he's all but a copy of his father, only the slightest hints of elvish blood in his features. It might just be kindness that she's pretending she can see hints of Aredhel in him, but it's kindness he never would have expected. “We received her letter some weeks back, asking how I died, and it seemed best to tell her in person that I was brought back.” She releases him, her eyes wide, and he nods at Valira. “She did that.”

Valira shakes her head, and touches the staff she keeps at her side. “This did that. I only allowed it to do its work.”

The man reaches out for it. “May I see?” Valira offers it easily, even though most would have hidden it away, when it's beyond price, an object out of legend. “This has great power, and it's known to us. That you can wield it speaks well of you, Valira Wayfinder, and that you wielded it to save a man to meet his mother again after long years speaks even better.”

The woman claps her hands together. “We'll send for Aredhel and those of Clan Seedblest who wish to meet you. It's our honor to be hosts of such a reunion, and you'll be weary.”

“We can travel on,” Haoti offers. “You said it's not far.”

“It would be shame to us to send you on,” says the man, giving Valira her staff back. “We only ask that you help with the work that brings the food to our tables, and harm none.”

With no ceremony at all, Valira drops her pack beside a tree and goes to kneel in the dirt, seeking the potatoes that he can see unearthed farther down the row. “That we can do,” she says. “And if you eat meat, I can hunt for your table as well. And if you don't, I'll harm no creature in your territory.”

“Obad-hai loves the hunt as he loves the garden,” says the man, just as Aredhel said by way of a blessing whenever Haoti went on a rare trip with his father to feed the fort. “We'll eat what you bring, Wayfinder.”

Valira joining in gives him little choice but to do so as well, and Haoti puts down his own belongings with a little more care and joins her in the dirt only a few seconds later. She smiles at him, and he remembers for the hundredth time just how much she sees of people, and how she knows that it will help him to have his hands in the soil while he waits for Aredhel's arrival. It's easier to go to her than to wait for her.

Another of the women asks about their journey, and how Tyne is recovering from the long years of Seath's rule, and Haoti lets Valira talk, and watches the people at their work. The man who seems to be in charge of the settlement speaks to a child and she goes scampering up a ladder, and not twenty minutes later comes back down again dressed for travel with a pack on her back. One of the women kisses her on the forehead, she gets a few more instructions from the man and from the woman who said she's kin to Aredhel's clan, and then she's off swiftly into the forest, probably to bring the news.

He wishes he knew what she's going to say. It will be good news for Aredhel, at least, but he still wants to know how the words will reach her ears, and if she's heard from Solomon since she sent her letter. Does she know what he's done, since she left? Does she know about Seath, the demon, the dragons? He's not sure if he wants Solomon to have told her or if he wants him to have tried to protect her.

“Just pick the potatoes, Haoti,” Valira says, almost under her breath, and he realizes that he's crouching there staring at his hands, not moving.

Now that Aredhel is so close, he doesn't know what to say to her, how to explain what a disappointment he's been to her, but there's no use worrying about it now. He works, and help the settlement bring in their harvest. They all talk to him, eager to hear of how he came to be looking for his mother, and it's strange to be more of a celebrity among them than Valira is.

Valira, as she seems to whenever there are children around, collects the young of the village, entertains them by having a very serious conversation with a passing chipmunk and by plucking out-of-season blooms out of the ground as fast as she can create them. When the harvest is done for the day, she beckons Haoti over too, not to expect anything of him but to let him share in the uncomplicated company that children provide.

Their hosts give them a fine feast, asking Valira about Tyne's new government, about Seath's remaining loyalists, and Haoti mostly stays with the children.

The hard work sends all of them to bed early, and Haoti finds himself in a solid bunk with a mossy mattress in a treehouse well off the ground, no fire to warm him for the first part of his sleep. Valira is there too, though, and she ignores the second bunk and prods him closer to the wall. “Too cold to sleep alone,” she says briefly when he stares at her. It's not really true. It's not warm, but their bedrolls will keep them warm enough.

“You don't have to,” he says, because the only reason he can think of for her to spend the night so close is if she's worried about him, with them so close to his mother. She likes her solitude. She doesn't need to be uncomfortable for a night for his sake.

Valira snorts and climbs into the bunk beside him, pulling the blankets roughly over them both. It's very different from sharing two bedrolls laid close side by side, and it's been a long time since he shared a bed with anyone. Long before he played host to a lust demon who thought it was funny to try to tempt him, even. “Just let people look after you once in a while, will you?” she asks, too sleepy to be waspish even if he thinks it's what she's aiming for.

She's free with her touches with people she trusts, he's discovered. She's always braiding Quil or Trilli's hair, patting Phi or Kithri on the shoulder, letting Lanra swing an arm around her waist or Tyler muss her hair, even once nodding off on Terry's shoulder after dinner when they'd tried too much of the previous year's batch of hard cider. Haoti doesn't quite know how to make himself part of that easy comfort, and she doesn't force it, but now, when she is, she touches him just as easily as she touches people she trusts. Her chin is sharp against his shoulder, her arm around his side when the size of the bed forces them close.

“I'm fine,” he says belatedly.

“Good, then you can relax,” she says, and when he dares wrap an arm around her in return, she sighs with contentment, and that's the last he hears of her that night.

*

The next morning Valira wakes him to go hunting. “A gift for our hosts,” she explains as he blinks up at her, bleary. It's clear she's already been up and at whatever supplies the settlement has laid out, because there's a mug of steaming tea in her hands that she shoves into his as soon as he sits up, and she tosses a hunk of bread onto his lap a second later. “Eat.”

“Aredhel might come,” he says belatedly, and takes a sip of the tea. “I shouldn't be away long enough to hunt.”

“So we come back after a few hours if we don't find anything,” says Valira with an easy shrug, and sets a plate with some cooked mushrooms and eggs of some kind down. “But if you sit here waiting for her all day, you'll be in no state to receive her when she comes. Come on, eat.”

“Do they know we're going?” he asks around a mouthful of bread.

“Of course they do. I asked if their stores could handle meat right now, and they seemed grateful at the thought, so we'll bring them back what we find, whether that's a rabbit for stew or a deer to preserve.”

That's a strong enough answer that he doesn't have any more excuses, so he eats and dresses, and Valira borrows a bow for him from the settlement, since it's not his primary weapon. She hunts better with snares, so when they set out, he follows her to set a few out, and she keeps him company while he finds a good blind and waits for prey.

She's right, of course, that it helps. Hunting is a sacrament, of sorts, and it's easy to empty his mind of everything but that and wait to see what comes.

They come home with a deer and a few pheasants from Valira's traps, and Aredhel still isn't there, but there's work to do in the gardens, so Haoti sets himself to do it, and Valira joins him once she's helped dress their game. The day fills simply, and he's never quite lived one like it, even on the road, but Valira seems perfectly at home, finding the rhythm of the settlement, which appears to be three extended families living in close quarters, without any trouble at all. Then again, from what she and Trilli have let slip, she grew up in a place much like this one.

“Does it upset you to be here?” he asks her in the afternoon. “It must remind you of home.”

Valira frowns. “It makes me miss the good parts, I won't pretend it doesn't, but this is it's own place. It's not my forest, or my childhood. Don't worry about me.”

“If you look after me, can't I look after you?” he challenges.

After a moment, Valira smiles. “I guess I can't argue with that. But I really am fine. I don't think … they haven't been preyed on here as much as they were in the Greenwoods at home. They're less afraid.”

Someday, he'll ask her for the details he hasn't gleaned. For the moment, he points out a young mother and her son playing a clapping game Aredhel taught him once, and lets Valira convince him to go over and take over the adult's part so the mother can have a few minutes to herself.

*

Aredhel's arrival comes with the stars, just barely visible through the cover of trees overhead. There's a small fire in the midst of the settlement where nearly everyone is collected, listening to stories. Haoti has the little boy he was playing games with, whose named proved to be Torel, sitting on his lap, asleep and drooling into his shirt, and between one moment and the next, the child messenger from the day before appears around the fire.

“Aredhel Seedblest is here,” she says a little breathlessly. “She brings no kin, though some may come after her.”

The woman who's related to Aredhel stands up, brushing dust off her skirt. Her name is Pramae and she's one of the oldest in the settlement, a wanderer and a wise woman and, he thinks he understands from her place among the others, a cleric, most likely of Obad-hai. She smiles at Haoti and raises her voice. “Aredhel Seedblest, has this child left you behind in the forest, or will you take your place at our fire?”

He recognizes her immediately, of course, even when she's at the edge of the flickering firelight. She looks no older than she did the day she left. Her face is the same, and the shade of her hair, and the way she carries herself so lightly, like no human does, which set her apart more than her pointed ears ever could at Fort Belvale. She's different, though, in more ways than he can quantify. No more brightly colored linens and painstaking curls, all that replaced with practical forest wear and intricate braiding that he thinks he dimly remembers her explaining have some significance. More than that, though, she's standing taller, no longer cringing away from her husband's cruel words. The wild red eyes, those he recognizes, and he regrets them. This time, they're his fault.

“Mother,” he says, and she stops searching the crowd with her eyes and finds him right away. Both of her hands go out, and he wants to stand up and go to her, but Torel is in his lap, somehow still asleep, and he's not cruel enough to do that.

Valira, of course, solves that problem before Torel's mothers, who were relieved to be spending the evening with each other alone, can think to move from their place around the fire. In a moment, she's leaning into his space, and wrapping her arms around Torel to pull him into her own lap. He fusses a little at the movement, but settles into her hold easily, with the comfort of a child who's never been held by someone he didn't trust.

When he looks up again, Aredhel's eyes are shining, and one hand is pressed over her mouth. Pramae, moving quickly, has already reached her and gently takes her other hand. “You'll have much to say, and you won't want to say any of it with all of us here. Tomorrow, we'll feast your reunion, with whatever guests come in your wake. Tonight, nothing in this forest will harm you. Walk where you will.”

Haoti manages to stand at last, and takes one last look at Valira, who only nods at him, before he goes to Aredhel. He's taller than she is now, and it's strange to look down on her. “Mother. A walk, then? If you haven't journeyed too far today?”

“Nothing could keep me from that,” she says, and Haoti picks a direction at random, no thought but _away_, and starts walking. It seems like a miracle when she falls into step next to him.

*

It's a long time before one of them speaks. She's crying, at his side, and Haoti doesn't know what to say, how to begin. All he can do is offer her a handkerchief that was a gift from Len, who whipped him up half a dozen months ago, all embroidered with his initials, when he realized Haoti no longer even had that to his name, all of the ones he'd had before turned to dust.

“Was Solomon wrong, then?” Aredhel asks at last, her voice thick with tears. “If he wasn't certain, it was a horrible thing to say.”

“He wasn't. Wrong, I mean.” Haoti takes a deep breath. “I was dead for months. When Seath was dead, and when it was possible, Valira brought me back. She's here with me.”

“Valira. I must thank her.” She swallows audibly. “Forgive me, I must know. Solomon is my nephew, but he forgets I've lived much longer than he has, and he tries to protect me. He wouldn't tell me how you died.”

Haoti would love to tell her that he died a hero, fighting truly and whole-heartedly against evil in the world, but he's long since decided that part of his penance, his redemption, has to be honesty. He can't pretend not to need forgiveness. “It's not a pretty story,” he warns her.

“It's the story of my son's death. Anything would be horrible.”

He takes a deep breath. “It was a demon. It was two demons, in fact: one that killed my body and one that siphoned away my soul.” She makes a small, hurt noise, and much as she tried to keep his father's monstrosities away from him when he was a child, he remembers the sound she would make when she offered him sweetness and he offered a snarl in response. It makes him want to retch, being the one to cause her so much pain.

But she wants to know, and he's bound himself to honesty, so he tells her all of it, and spares her only the cruelty of Solomon's collar. That's Solomon's own cruelty to reckon with and speak or not speak of. Haoti speaks of wanting power and acceptance, of wanting to make Oveld proud. He talks about two dragons, and how easily he could have doomed the world with selfishness and stupidity and the sheer bad luck of almost killing the world's saviors. He talks about traveling with them instead, and failing in the redemption they asked of him, and the words pour out of him in a bitter stream that he can't stop.

“I failed you,” he says when he's run out of words and left her weeping again, hands pressed to her face as they stand by a huge tree he doesn't know to name. They can't hear the murmurs of the settlement or see the orange glow of the fire anymore. It's all dim, the uniform grey of seeing in the darkness, interrupted only sometimes by a pair of curious eyes from a passing owl or raccoon.

“No,” she says, and moves with sudden purpose to seize his hands. “You couldn't possibly.”

“You taught me better. And I'm sorry.”

“Oh, darling. There's never been a day I haven't missed you, and I won't say that you did right, but there's more to the story. This Valira, these heroes … you're with them now. Surely they must have seen something in you.”

“Anything in me worth saving was a legacy from you.”

Aredhel takes a long, shaking breath. “Does Oveld know you're alive?”

“I don't know if he's alive, or if he knew I was dead in the first place.” He hesitates, but as much as news of what a monster he became is a shock to her, news that Oveld continued to be as much of a brute as he became towards her can't be a surprise. “He was a loyalist of Seath's to the end, from what I know. When Seath cut me loose, he probably did as well, and I only ever wanted to impress him in the first place because ...”

He stops himself, but it's too late. Aredhel already heard the words he shouldn't have even thought. “Because he was the only family I left you, and you wanted to be loved by someone.”

“You're making excuses for me.”

“No. Only trying to understand how all of this could happen to my sweet, bright boy.”

The sweetness and brightness got worn off bit by bit and year by year, and while he's hoping to manage goodness, he thinks those may be lost forever. “It didn't happen to me,” he says. “I made the choices.”

She shakes her head. “With what alternatives? Saying no to Oveld and to Seath from the beginning and dying without the hope of resurrection?”

Better to die a good man with principles, but he doesn't want to hurt Aredhel more than she's already been hurt. “Whatever the choices I made, I'm trying to be better now.”

“If you're hunting good deeds, coming here is one. I've missed you every day of my life, and regretted leaving you just as often. Tonight I think we've already … you've said a great deal, and I've traveled a long way. If tonight is about your confession, maybe tomorrow can be about my apologies. And … you have a companion? I'd like to meet her.”

Haoti almost smiles at her delicate tone, remembering it after a moment as one that he heard a few mothers use when he was at Seath's court, trying to encourage their children towards matrimony. “One of the saviors of the world. Valira Wayfinder, who resurrected me. She's a friend.”

“I owe her many thanks, then,” she says, and folds his handkerchief up. “I'll keep this until I can clean it.”

“I have extras. Keep it as long as you need.” He feels like he should say everything at once, but they're both overwhelmed, and he's already ensured that their first conversation together in so long is one they'll both remember as hard and horrible. Maybe it's best to end the worst part now, and start fresh in the morning. “Should we go back? You've traveled a long day, you must need time to trance, and I need sleep.”

“Of course.” She puts her arms around him, and he awkwardly allows the hug, and when he remembers to move his limbs, hugs her back. She smells familiar too, even without the familiar soaps and perfumes from her table at the fort. “They'll feast for us at midday, but the rest of the day, that's ours. We'll talk again.”

“Yes. I'll answer your questions, any you have. And I'd like to hear about your life here, if you'll talk about it.”

“Of course I will. As I said—I owe you apologies.” She releases him and starts walking with the unerring sense of direction that comes from familiarity. Haoti has good woods sense, but she knows every inch of this forest, even most of a day's travel from her home settlement. He follows along behind her, disturbing as little as he can as he passes, keeping quiet so he can have the reward of quiet nighttime sounds as they pass through the forest.

When they get to the settlement again, the fire is extinguished and only a few flickering lights dotting some of the treehouses. Pramae is sitting up at the bottom of one of the trees, and stands to extend her hand to Aredhel. “Come, you must be weary. Your son has his own place to stay, and you'll both need to think.”

He's reminded of Kithri, even if Pramae is much gentler. Kithri has the same kind of wisdom, and the same way of inexorably pushing things in the direction she'd like them to go. As with Kithri, it's easier to yield to Pramae than to protest, and Haoti clasps his mother's hand one last time, and climbs up the ladder to the treehouse he shares with Valira.

She's awake, having a whispered conversation with an owl at the window, and she dismisses it quietly when he comes up and stands there looking at him. “Come on, get in. I thought about going to bed, but I don't sleep closest to the wall.”

“And it didn't occur to you to sleep in your own bunk?”

“Tell me you want to be alone and I'll leave you that way,” says Valira, and it seems Haoti's strictures of honesty for himself extend even this far, because he can't bring himself to say it. “Come on, then. You need rest. Did it go well?”

Haoti is too exhausted for modesty, suddenly. He gets ready for bed as quickly as he can, leaving everything else for morning. “I told her about my death, and what came before it,” he says, and climbs into the bunk, shuffling up against the wall.

Valira's beside him in a second, their knees bumping and interlocking, his arm automatically extending to pull her in comfortably. She sighs and runs a gentle hand through his hair. “And I suppose you only told her about the bad.”

He stares at her in the dark, baffled. “Only the bad? Valira, what could possibly be good about me, after everything I did?”

She's silent for a long time, but she keeps stroking his hair. “Torel felt that I was a very poor substitute for you when he woke up,” she says. “Children are smart. Surely if he loves you so already, there's good in you. Maybe you'll listen to him, if not to us.”

Haoti doesn't know what to say to that, so he lets her keep soothing him to sleep, and wakes in the morning to find she hasn't left even though she's clearly been awake for a while, his head tucked under her chin where he feels embarrassed and protected and like, perhaps, he can survive what the day is going to bring him.

*

Aredhel is more composed, in the daylight. The settlement is full of the air of celebration, and that only grows stronger when two more members of the Seedblest Clan arrive. It's a small and scattered clan, but Aredhel's brother and her niece come, and greet him with hugs and happiness that make up for Aredhel's slight reserve. Haoti doesn't blame her for that. He knows he's given her plenty to think about.

Valira stays nearby but quiet. She uses the children as an excuse, mostly, and doesn't introduce herself to Aredhel even though he sees Aredhel watching her. She talks to his uncle and niece, though, particularly his niece, who's his age but purely an elf and thus still very much a child. There were few children while they traveled, and there are none at Fairpoint Hold as yet, and it seems like a pity. He hadn't known how much Valira loves children before.

Haoti stays near Aredhel, only ducking away to help with the preparations of the feast, coming back to her every time he's sent away. She doesn't talk about the years yawning between them, or their conversation in the darkness. Instead, she talks about life in the forest in its generalities, the rhythm of the seasons, the feast days, the scatterings of families and clans all through the woods.

When the feast is served, they firmly prod him into a prominent seat, Aredhel to one side of him and Valira to the other, and they're toasted with dandelion wine and then, mercifully, left mostly to themselves with no speeches or rituals to go through.

Almost as soon as the meal is served, the deer he and Valira hunted being put to good and immediate use, Aredhel leans across him to smile at Valira. “I owe you my thanks a thousand times over. For bringing him here, for bringing him back—for saving the world, too, though you must have heard everyone's thanks for that.”

Valira nods, but she doesn't smile back. “You don't owe me thanks.” She lifts her chin. “I did it for him.” The _Not for you_ is so strongly implied that he almost winces.

Aredhel sits up straight, and he waits for offense, or tears, or some other sign of unhappiness. Instead, she sighs. “I understand. Maybe we can talk later, you and I? I think … I think it would be good, if you were willing.”

“I'm willing.”

That's still freezingly cold, and Valira is usually friendly to people unless she's about to start a battle then and there. He's not sure what's made her so unhappy, but Haoti jumps desperately into the conversation anyway. “Valira and I are staying at Fairpoint Hold near the northeast border in Tyne, if you remember where that is,” he offers.

“I do. I was surprised when Solomon told me to send my letter there.” Aredhel frowns. “I don't remember that as a place of … of goodness, or kindness.”

Valira softens just a little, as she always does when she talks about her companions, even when it's the horrors of their pasts. “It wasn't, for a long time. But it was free of Crestmaker's influence years before Tyne was free of Seath's.”

“Good. Seath was fond of him, but even for Oveld he went too far.”

Haoti wonders, sometimes, how the people of Fairpoint Hold survived their rebellion. Crestmaker was a cruel man in just the stripe that Seath loved. Did Seath hope that he was deposed for love of power and not for safety and family? If that's why he summoned Phi, he missed the mark with her. “It's a happy place. And I don't plan to leave it soon. If you wanted to risk Tyne, you could visit.”

Aredhel pales a little. “I'll think on it.”

“We could protect you, if it came to that,” says Valira, gentler than before, and changes the subject to stories of Phi's brothers and Haoti and the girls. She speaks of moments he barely remembers and didn't realize she'd noticed: a friendly competition with Tyler over who could eat the most of Kithri's biscuits over a breakfast, a less friendly competition with Star about who had better aim with throwing daggers, his ongoing attempt to think of a pun before Gari can, which he's never once managed.

By the end of lunch, Aredhel looks happier than she did before.

*

When the feast is over, it's Valira who suggests a walk with Aredhel, the three of them together. “I'll turn back after not too long,” she assures him, maybe seeing his nerves. “But we may as well talk.”

They do, about innocuous things, as they leave the settlement. Aredhel talks about a new variety of pepper that they hope to try in the next growing season that should need less sun when sun is such a precious commodity, and Valira chimes in with her thoughts and expresses a desire to try some of the seed stock to grow herself.

When they get a good distance, though, Valira stops. “Why did you leave him?”

“Valira,” says Haoti, horrified. “I can take care of myself.”

“Yes, but you don't. And you won't.” She turns to Aredhel. “I'm not asking why you left his father. I don't know much, but I know enough to know it's a good thing you were out of his reach. I'm asking why you didn't take him with you.”

He dreamed about it vividly for the first year and more after she was gone. He dreamed that she'd taken him with her, or that she came back and stole him away in the night, and took him to where everything was green and quiet, where they lived with little worry of kings or war, where he wasn't by turns ignored by his father and saddled with his expectations. After that, he made himself forget the way he assumed Aredhel had forgotten him, and only started having those daydreams again when there was a demon in his head to scorn them.

Aredhel bows her head. “It's a poor reason, and you're right to be angry. I was afraid. Oveld was in love with the idea of having a son, and boasted about Haoti's martial prowess to everyone he knew. If he'd come with me, we would have been hunted, and I knew what Seath was. If he took it in his head to indulge Oveld's desire to bring his son home, I might not have survived. He might have sacked the forest, cut down the heart trees to make ships and houses. I couldn't bring that to my home, and that meant I couldn't risk bringing him.”

There's silence after that. Eventually, Valira nods. She still doesn't look happy, and Haoti can't say he feels much better knowing that his mother chose herself and her home over him, but something eases in her face nonetheless. “Fine.”

“What answer were you looking for?” he asks, unable to help it bursting out of him. “What could that have served?”

Aredhel opens her mouth to say something, but Valira beats her to it. “Because you seem worried that she saw some kind of poison in you then, was reminded too much of your father, and if that was true, I would take you away now. You don't need to listen to someone who will believe the awful things you say about yourself.”

“Oh, Haoti,” says Aredhel, reaches out for him and drops her hand again. “You look like him, but no matter what you've done, you aren't like him. And what you told me last night upset me, but only because you wouldn't have had to face it all if I'd been a proper mother to you.”

Valira nods sharply. “There. I've said what I needed to say, and I think you two can talk about the rest of this without me.”

Haoti could almost laugh, if he weren't so embarrassed, about her bluntness, the way she'll never made a diplomat but always seems to talk herself into exactly the outcome she wants anyway. Aredhel just nods in return and clasps Valira's hand the way she hasn't done with Haoti yet. “I'll be careful with him. And thank you again. I know it was for him, but knowing he's alive, and that I have a second chance, it's beyond price. Perhaps we can talk again, the two of us? I'm beginning to see that I can't expect him to represent himself honestly.”

“We'll talk,” says Valira. “But for now I'll leave you to it.”

“I can take care of myself, and represent myself honestly too,” he tells both of them, nettled.

“I know you can. You just don't.” Valira squeezes his shoulder. “See you for dinner? I imagine it will be lunch, but lukewarm.”

“Fine. We'll talk about this later,” he says, and lets her go off into the woods, back towards the settlement.

Aredhel is the one who starts walking again, and he follows her, lets her decide what to say next, since it seems like neither of them trust his accountings of himself even though Valira talked to him a lot about redemption when they traveled together. She knows what he has to atone for. “I owe you so many apologies I hardly know where to begin,” Aredhel finally says.

“I don't blame you for leaving, or leaving me either. I know what Father is, and I came to know Seath better than most people by the end. If you were frightened … that's only as it should have been.”

She shakes her head. “All of the blame for you, and none of it for anyone else? That won't wash, and that should be enough to tell you that you're nothing like you're father. Let me apologize. Solomon was smuggling and trading even then. If I hadn't panicked when I finally made the decision, I would have taken you to him and asked him for a way to prevent our being tracked. I would have found a home in a different forest, with Clan Seedblest so scattered. Eventually he would have gotten himself a son some other way. He was young enough to start again.”

“So you'd condemn some other poor woman and child?”

“For you?” She finds them a deer track and starts them down it. “It was cowardice to leave you, Haoti. And I can never make up for it completely, but we can make a new start, can't we?”

A new start like his new life. He hasn't been able to start that out fresh and clean. It's a second chance, but he's the same person he was before, who did the same deeds, who has written a formal letter to the world's remaining dragons submitting himself to their judgment and whatever penance they feel he deserves, though he hasn't gotten up the courage to send it yet. No new start is ever fully new.

But he doesn't want to ask his mother for penance, or make her grovel, or spend the rest of his life with awkwardness and their past between them. “We can start from where we are,” he says, and hopes she sees the distinction.

“Yes. Yes, that's better in the end.” On the track, trees seem closer together, and he catches the occasional glimpse of movement between them. None of it feels threatening, though, only busy. Even such an ancient, quiet forest is teeming with life. “She cares about you very much.”

Haoti blinks, not expecting the words when he's been calming himself by thinking about the woods. “Valira? I suppose so. She's the one who brought me back. Maybe she thinks that means she has to watch out for me.”

“She cares for you. Anyone who wants to protect you that much has more in mind than just not wasting powerful magic. Don't insult her by saying you don't deserve it.” That silences him, and Aredhel seems to realize it. “Tell me how you met her.”

It takes Haoti a while of walking before he can put the words together, but Aredhel doesn't ask again. It was a smart question, though, because when he talks about Valira, it's easier than talking about how he failed the saviors of the world again and again. Their beginning is still horrible, that fight on Amana's island where she fell so easily, but the rest is better. He still failed her and betrayed her, but he can talk about her spinning lies with Seath, about her feeding him a berry in the fire giant's cells, about her own demon, and the way she reached out time and again to offer him redemption, even if it was in ways he didn't want.

With it, by necessity, comes a fuller story of his death: their trip up the mountain, the way he'd spent the whole way up the mountain trying to find a way to apologize to the blue dragon and offer his death or his service as the dragon pleased but how he choked on the words when he tried to say them and died on his way down the mountain, before he had another chance. It brings the story of waking on a spring day in a room at Fairpoint Hold and Valira telling him he deserved a better chance at life, and how long it took to just get used to living again.

Aredhel was always skillful with her words, he remembers now, as she draws shades of his tale out of him: the leadership of his first group that he hated, his terror of being called worthy to switch places with a man who had been host to a god for centuries, the grudging admiration for the world's saviors that stopped being grudging long before he died.

“You've lived a hard life,” she says at last, low and mournful. “I wish I could have offered you a better one. But you've come out a better man—a good man.”

Haoti shakes his head and stops walking, and she turns around to look at him. “I don't know how you can listen to all of that and say that I'm good.”

“You haven't always been good, then. I haven't either, I think we discussed not too long ago. But anyone who feels as sick as you clearly do about their bad deeds can't be such a monster. I talked to you last night about choices. Since you've had them again, since you woke up at Fairpoint Hold, I don't think you've made choices that would make me call you a bad man.”

Aredhel turns the subject after that, asking about his life as a paladin of Obad-hai, how he's doing at regaining the god's favor after it deserting him almost completely at the end of his first life. Haoti answers absently as she takes them on a loop through the forest that takes them until nearly dinner, but he's thinking about choices, and new starts, and Valira.

*

Valira and Aredhel disappear after dinner, and Haoti gets to know his uncle and his niece until Tiala starts yawning and the two excuse themselves with apologies to their guest quarters. Overwhelmed after a day of hard conversations, Haoti retreats to his own, but there's no hope of sleep so soon.

He could try to call down a bird to speak with, or some other creature that's most awake in the dark, but he doesn't find those conversations relaxing the way Valira does. For her, the simplicity of beasts and their desires is a balm. Haoti always ends up discontented with himself, wishing he could have some of their wisdom for himself.

Instead, he sits in the quiet and meditates. It's not a practice he's had regular time for, even though it was part of his training as a paladin, and is when he always felt closest to Obad-hai. After the succubus set up camp in his mind, it ceased being a time for quiet reflection where he could calm his mind. Now, the silence in his head makes it feel like it's ringing hollow, and his thoughts rattle on faster than they do otherwise, trying to fill the silence he still can't get used to.

Eventually, he manages something like the state he wants. His thoughts aren't totally still, but there's some measure of peace and calm, after so many hard conversations in one day. He sits there, enjoying the rest of it, until he hears the creak of the ladder and unfolds his limbs, shaking off stiffness.

“Did you talk about me much?” he asks when she comes in, muffling a yawn with her hand.

Valira shakes her head. “What else do we have to talk about? Yes. But she asked about me, and I asked about her.” She shrugs. “For all her failings, she loves you. That's … I'm glad of that.”

“Were you worried about that? You left your family, and I think you still love all of them, not just Trilli.”

Valira pauses, and then turns away to strip off some of the day's layers. Haoti, with a sigh, starts doing the same, reminding himself that she doesn't mind, so he shouldn't need to. “She left. I was sent. There's a difference. She seems to have done her best to keep everyone but you safe.”

“She's frightened of what I'll think of her.” Haoti sits on the bed. He's used to getting in first, now, letting Valira have the outside. He wonders if she's protecting him, or herself, and if it was something she always did or if it's a legacy her journey has left her with. “I told you once she was like a caged bird, and she was wasting away like one, before she left. He was awful to her but never to me unless he was pointing out her faults, as he saw them, in me. I suppose she hoped he might be a good father without her there to inflame his anger.”

Haoti moves in to the wall, pulls his legs up, shuffles until he can put his head on the pillow, while Valira thinks about that. “I suppose I can't talk too much about loving people who have hurt you. It's good of you to forgive her, though.”

Valira and her insistence on his goodness. He may disappoint her again, the way he did when he rebuffed her every time she tried to speak to him about demons and redemption, but for the moment, in the dark, his mind empty enough to sleep and sleep without dreams for once, it's a comfort to have her faith. “Nothing can be like it was before. But I want to know her again, and for that there has to be some forgiveness.”

She climbs in next to him. Tonight, she keeps to herself, as much as she can on the thin bunk, and it's Haoti who has to reach out for her, settle them together. Valira sighs into his neck, but she doesn't relax enough that he thinks she's trying to sleep. “Are you staying?” she asks at last.

Haoti only doesn't sit up at once because he's afraid it would dump her out of the bed. “Why would I? I never even thought of it.”

“No, perhaps not, but you seem happy here. You could rebuild with your mother. Be away from reminders of your past. Atone by growing potatoes and anything else you wanted. You like it here. And they like you.”

Haoti thinks about that life, and how it might be to live. Aredhel not far away, a quiet and ancient forest around him that has seen much more evil in its days than one man trying to scrub up his tarnished soul, a garden and a clan and … and visits, from Valira, not seeing her almost every day at least once. Not planning to build a cottage at the edge of the woods near Fairpoint Hold like others of Phi's brothers are starting to do, like Phi and Terry are talking about. Not listening to Lanra's jokes and getting whacked on the knuckles with Kithri's wooden spoon and suffering Trilli's mistrust and Star's disdain.

“It might be easier,” he says, because he has to admit that. “But I would miss the outside world too much. I haven't done what I want to do there. I want to visit here, and invite Aredhel to visit me too, if she dares risk Tyne, but I don't want to stay.”

Valira's hand squeezes tight on his arm. “And what is it that you want to do, back home? Go journeying again, to better purpose this time? Sharpen every last blade within twenty miles of Fairpoint Hold?”

“I don't know. Some of all of it. And some of … of staying home, and trying to really make it one.”

There's a long silence, and Haoti is surprised at himself for the bluntness of it, when he hasn't even been that honest with himself before. He'd been unsure of his welcome, but no one seems to be sending him away, and if they don't mind him staying, there's nowhere he'd rather be. “Good,” Valira says finally.

“We'll stay a few more days, and then if you want, I would enjoy flying back like you offered on our way.”

Valira's face is pressed so close to his neck that he can feel her smile. “Good. I like flying.”

*

A few days pass in a blink. Haoti mostly spends them with Aredhel. They take a trip to the settlement she calls home, one a little bigger and better-established than the one they call Ashfell where he and Valira stumbled to a stop. Everyone coos over him like he's all of their long-lost son, calls him brave and a blessing, and he's relieved beyond the telling of it when Aredhel takes him back to Ashfell and Valira, who refused to come with them.

“You like to be near her,” Aredhel observes when they're nearing Ashfell and he can't quite stop his steps from speeding up. He's still not as fleet of foot as the wood elves, and he knows Aredhel could have traveled faster without him, but she has to pick up her pace when he hurries.

“Of course I do. She's my friend, and she … I owe her everything and more. Why wouldn't I want to be near her?”

Aredhel stops walking and takes his hand. “It's allowed to be more than that. And if it is, don't make it about owing. It's not a good foundation. And aside from that, I don't think she sees it that way.”

“I don't know how she sees it,” says Haoti, but he's beginning to understand on this trip. She trusts Phi and Quil and Kithri more than anyone else, but she doesn't climb into bed with them every night and wrap around them. The rest of it—maybe she spends time convincing them of their goodness, of what they deserve, and defends them even when they might not need it, but he hasn't seen her do it in quite the same way. There's always been something different between them, but in this new life, maybe he can become worthy of it.

“She watches you, and it's not just to protect you,” says Aredhel. “Be happy, won't you? You don't have to do it tomorrow, or even next year, but let yourself be happy someday, and if her happiness means you … then make each other happy. That's the beginning and the end of it.”

It's not as simple as that, but then again, maybe it is. Aredhel, of anyone, knows what happiness means, and how horrible its absence feels. “I'll try,” he says, and she leaves it there.

*

Haoti has teleported before, but he's never flown. When Valira frowns over the clouds above and says it looks like there are days of rain ahead of them and she'd rather not fly wet, all of Ashfell springs into action, giving them food and trinkets for their journey. It's only been a week of reunion, but they all cry, and Haoti is obliged to hold Torel for a full five minutes before he can be persuaded to get out of the way to give Valira the space to transform that she needs.

Aredhel hugs them both at the last, but she's silent. She doesn't ask for promises of return, or of letters. Haoti makes them anyway, and she just smiles at him, teary, and pulls him down so she can kiss his brow. “I'll take care of him,” says Valira, coming up behind him.

Aredhel kisses her brow too. “Take care of each other.”

That seems as good a way to end as any, and Valira seems to agree. She shoos them all back, Haoti included, and then there's the smell of ozone, a puff of displaced air, a sudden and noisy rustling of feathers. Several of the children make admiring noises, reaching out, but their mothers and fathers hold them back, and Haoti waves to them all before he goes to climb onto Valira's back. She promised him it won't hurt her, but he's still ginger, and spends time balancing their packs before he taps her wing to signal that he's ready and buries his fingers in her feathers to stay on her.

A few pumps of powerful wings, and Valira is rising up and up, straight up, following the trunks of the impossibly high trees up to their tops, breaking through the crown and into a glorious cloudy day. Already, Ashfell is swallowed by the forest, so well hidden as to be invisible, and Valira is still climbing.

The air is clear and cold and the wind buffets him, and Haoti can't help letting out a shout like a child plunging into a cold lake, shock and the sheer joy of being alive. Valira lets out a cry that rings across the forest, and points them towards home.

Land that took them days to cross on the way there is eaten up by Valira's slow and steady wingbeats. Haoti watches the forests grow younger and wilder. He sees Tyne when they reach it, because the tarrasque left its scars everywhere, craters in the land that will take a long time to grow over, that will change the maps and geography of the land. It's recovering, though. He sees a few villages that have moved into new valleys, a river that has pooled itself into a lake, a settlement that seems to have decided to use the conveniently cleared land to farm in. Maybe in ten years, the fields will look like an odd oblong shape, or maybe they'll take care to preserve the outlines of foot and claws, the reminder of what can come when bad men are given too much power.

By the time they land, Haoti's fingers are almost numb with cold despite his gloves, and he's red-cheeked and exhilarated at being higher than he's ever been. “I want to fly someday,” he says almost as soon as Valira's herself again, shaking out her arms.

She smiles at him. “I can cast Polymorph. You won't quite feel like yourself, but I think you'll like it anyway. There are memories afterwards … it's good. We'll do it. Though not today.”

He looks around, and finds that they're not far from the campsite where they stopped the first night they left Fairpoint Hold. “Did you run out of magic in the armor? We could have gotten home, if you wanted to get there.”

“I know we could have. But I wanted one more night.”

“Why?”

“You, mostly. I want … did this help?”

Haoti frowns, startled by the question. “Of course it did. It's meant so much to me. And it gave me a chance to clear the air with my mother, and … I feel better. I don't know if I'll ever feel like I deserve this second chance you gave me, but I'm trying to.”

“You aren't alone in that, you know. I won't ever feel like I deserve Fairpoint Hold, the life I'm living now. It's what comes of demons, I guess. And what comes of living the way we both did, for too long. Alone.”

Haoti has been alone since Aredhel left. His father doesn't count, and Seath doesn't, and his first companions don't either, even if he wishes he could have seen the best of them, and they the best of him. Solomon doesn't. Even Valira and her friends that first time don't count, because he wouldn't let them be real companions to him. But now he has a whole hold full of people who look after him and don't let him get too lost in his own head and his own horrors, and he has Phi, who treats him with gentle sympathy, and Kithri, who makes his favorite apple tarts on every visit even as she berates him for every real or imagined shortcoming, and Quil, who still hasn't learned to trust him but lends him books she buys from the nearest city as soon as she's finished them. And he has Valira, who's kept him company on this trip and held him at night and let him fly.

“Do you still feel alone?” he asks.

“No. Haven't for a long time. But not with you, if that's what you're asking. How about you? Does it feel better, now that you have some family back?”

“It feels better knowing I have someone who would come with me and defend me to my own mother, even if it turned out not to be necessary,” he says. “No. I don't think I'm alone anymore.”

Valira nods and starts work on setting up the camp, moving easily into a routine. Haoti puts himself to work as well, even though it's early in the day and they could easily make it to Fairpoint Hold walking before dark. One more day, not alone together, seems perfect.

They go back to their habitual silence, but with those words between them, it feels more companionable than awkward. Valira talks a lot with people she doesn't trust, but she doesn't do it with him anymore. She pulls out a knife and whittles away at what must be a knot carved out of some of the firewood at Ashfell, making some kind of bird, and Haoti stares up at the sky and then goes to find them some dinner.

At night, they retire early without talking about it first, and arrange their bedrolls so they can share. It feels strange to think of having his own bed again, and Valira having hers, and having the privacy he usually wants so much. Even Valira, who sometimes wanders into the forest alone for a day no matter how happy she is at Fairpoint Hold, doesn't seem to mind spending so much time in his company.

That's what gives him the courage to kiss her, in the end, when they've settled in for the night and are listening to the tap of a gentle rain that's going to get less gentle sometime in the middle of the night. He settles for a brief kiss, a test, since he can't bring himself to say the words to ask her.

Valira pulls him in to kiss him back, as easy as if it's been inevitable forever, as if it's something she's been waiting for, and for the second time in a day, Haoti feels as though he's flying.

*

It's almost dinnertime when they walk through the gates of Fairpoint Hold. They're hailed happily from the gatehouse, and sound carries in the hold walls, so there's a crowd gathered to meet them within minutes, all a mess of questions and greetings and slaps on the back. Most of the greetings are for Valira, but more than he would have expected are for him too, Iain updating him on the preparations for planting garlic and Lanra calling a tease about needing his sword polished across the crowd.

Haoti finds himself not far from Phi—probably by design. She doesn't let much get past her, and this whole journey was thanks to her, in the end. She'll want to check in on both of them. “Did you find what you needed?” she asks, low enough that no one around them can hear.

He didn't, really. He was given it, or he discovered what it was, or a hundred other things, but it's close enough for most people. Sometime, when he has the right words, he'll share them with Phi, and she'll understand, but for today, he just smiles, and glances at Valira, who's laughing at something Len is telling her with her arm around Quil's shoulders. When he looks back at Phi, he suspects that was answer enough, but he speaks anyway. “I think so. But even so, I'm glad to be home.”

“We're glad to have you back,” says Phi, easy as that, and Haoti finds himself caught up in the greetings again, a family just as happy to see him as Aredhel and the people of Ashfell were sorry to see him go.

He may not deserve his families, but it's not a matter of deserving or owing, Aredhel told him, and maybe he's starting to believe her.


End file.
